Jack Tweed found not guilty of rape

[Ponders]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/8644486.stm

hmm. Did he just get the benefit of the doubt do you think - his word against hers?

Or "she knew what he's like when she chose to go back to his house"?hmm

Will she now be named?

These cases are horrible - really hard to determine who's guilty - maybe we should adopt the Scottish Not Proven verdict.

(put this in sleb twaddle before & then realised hardly anybody reads that!)

What about my suggestion re presumption of lack of consent unless you get express consent on first occasion (with that partner) - plus mass education of young people? Would cover the "too drunk" scenario - man would either not go ahead if couldn't get express consent or take risk.
Of course there is the further problem that he could then lie about express consent, so perhaps it would have to be in writing? Which may sound silly, but why should it?

"You didn't think anything other than she was up for it".....Spero, the law helps us here....what steps did you reasonably take to believe she was consenting? Not thinking means total disregard for whether there was consent or not surely?

Blimey Spero I find lots of men sexually attractive, does that mean they are entitled to have sexual access to me, with or without my consent?

Dittany - your stark characterisation of men in this way just isn't helpful. Surely you must accept that in every case it isn't simply predator and victim. A lot of these cases fail because it seems to be two drunks who can't remember what they were doing.

I refuse to accept that expecting some degree of responsibility for your own health and well being is in any way 'putting the blame on the victim' or excusing men who rape.

Anyway I'm off to bed.

Spero, as has already been mentioned several times on this thread, false reports of rape account for 2-4% of reported rapes. Research conducted in the UK, New Zealand and Denmark (iirc) indicate that the likely figure is 2%. So if these cases you refer to have been splashed all over the press, they would fall into that category, wouldn't they. Which makes one wonder why this 2% of allegations receive so much coverage and the other 98% receive little or none at all.

I agree, dittany - am haunted by this case.

Dittany, I know...but the Sexual Offences Act helps a little in that there is more emphasis than before on securing consent

Like I said, it helps a little.....doesn't mean juries believe it was true consent....there is still a long way to go

Spero please have a read of the "asking for it" thread.
Then have a good long think for yourself.

Then have a think about your daughter, imagine she fancies a lovely young well respected young man, maybe at the same uni.
She's at a lot of social functions at the same time as him and the attraction between them is noted by others.
They go on a date, your daughter for some reason be it nerves, bravado or whatever has a few too many and goes back to his room.
I won't go on.

Now when she came to you distraught, ashamed God only knows whats going on in her head, what would you say?
"Take some responsibility?"
"What on earth we're you thinking?"
Or will you say it doesn't matter what others think they saw or how much you drank, rape is rape and you did nothing to ask for or deserve it.

She will be in the News of the World this weekend. Just wait.

...'victim' indicating that she found him sexually attractive at least at the beginning of their encounter...

Ah, I see. If I find a man attractive and indicate that to him, then I have given consent to have a penis in me some time in the foreseeable future. Understood.

Just interested, Spero, do you think men would object if women refused to ever flirt, act friendly or go outside the house ever again? I mean, to avoid accidentally consenting to having some stranger stick a dick in her when he feels like it?

Now I remember why I avoid rape threads. Dittany,you have turned this into your own witch hunt,anyone who has disagreed with yOur side of the story,which seems to be that woman don't lie about rape-you seem to be totally unwilling to consider that she was the perpetrator-for whatever reason-and he was the victim of her lies.

I agree with a lot of what Spero says,and I don't think she's at all pro-rape,or writing from a mans point of view. Other crime rates have much higher conviction rates because very very often there is other evidence,a murder weapon, wounds etc. Rape is one of the only crimes where it is absolutely 1:1-even with bruising and injuries (which there were not in this case) you could say that both parties consented
to rough sex!it is such a difficult crime to try and then convict-this is not right,but
sadly I cannot see how this will ever
change? Blouses suggestion of getting
informed consent-how would that work?
(genuinely curious) would you have to
carry a contract around with you? Also,
on the 'asking for it' thread it was stated
that most people are raped by someone
they know-what if you had sex before and
then were raped by them?would this
absolve the man of rape?

Also, people keep refering to the 'cock in
her mouth' while she was being
penetrated-sadly-this is not an uncommon
thing in this day and age! I know girls who
will happily partake in this sort of
behaviour.....and much worse. Yes this
may be because porn has skewed the
realities and woman feel they should do
these things-but to be honest it's not a
massive leap for me to believe they enjoy
it-I have been told this by one of these
lovely ladies. I also know one girl who
gave her boyfriend and his friend this
'situation' as a gift for his birthday!(yes-it is
a sad sad world-but it was absolutely her
choice and in fact her idea) I think you're
being hugely stereotypical if you think because they
both had themselves inside her at the same time it's
more likely to be rape.

I'm sure there will be many points a lot of people want to refute from this post and others but I would possibly suggest moving from this thread to another-I think the line is becoming very blurry of where we're discussing Jack Tweeds case and where we're speaking about rape in general.there are a few posts up the thread where the womans is referred to as 'the victim' which strictly speaking makes it look like Tweed is then the perpetrator and therefore guilty. Probably not the best for mumsnet to become embroiled in that sort of slander accusations again.

"I think generally men who claim that they've been falsely accused of rape are lying rapists. Needs to be said unfortunately."

So in general you believe that if a man is accused of rape he is guilty? how does that make you any better than people that assume if a woman accuses a man of rape she's generally lying?

I also saw earlier on you mentioned a jury study which showed that the jury in general demanded a higher standard to convict for rape than any other crime. did it mention any reasons why this attitude prevailed as I've always been interested in the psychology behind it? I've noticed this in practice and the only reason I can come up with is the possibility that the practical differences between consent in say a theft based case as oppossed to rape. You are very rarely going to get any sort of a plausible scenario in theft where one person believes the other person to have allowed them to take their stuff when they have not consented etc. and if there is a misunderstanding on consent the person will most likely just return the item. Where as with rape it can obviously not be "undone" and there are often scenarios presented where by consent is not black and white especially where copious amounts of alcohol are involved.

Hi Dittany, just got back from work.

I googled 'solicitor accused man of rape' and immediately the case came up. It was late last year.

Here is the first link from google - sorry its the Daily Mail which probably doesn't help my credibility, but it gives you the facts. You can check out the other links if you like.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1224702/Student-cleared-raping-solicitor-forced-change-deed-poll.ht ml

I'll go and look for the others now, as heaven forfend you should think I just scurry off to bed without giving you any proof!

scoutliam - I hope my daughter, when she is older will not feel she has to go back to any man's room/house if she does not want to. I hope she will understand that if she goes out and gets drunk and starts kissing and flirting, this could put her in a dangerous position and she needs to be able to look after herself and not simply hope that the criminal justice system will sought it out after the fact.

If someone made it clear they found me sexually attractive, to the extent they were kissing me, agreed to come back to my house, got into bed with me etc, etc, I would not at that stage be thinking I needed to ask them explicity if they consented to me having sex with them and I would be shocked and horrified if after the event they accused me of acting against their wishes.

There are a lot of people who think like me, and we'll be on a lot of juries. I would never convict a man of rape in those circumstances, as it could be my brother or my dad.

If you want to convince me I'm wrong about this, your arguments need to be a tad more convincing than I've had so far.

Dittany - I googled 'student drunk consent' and the case I was thinking about comes up first. Ok, it is 2007 so not as recent as I remembered, but right on my point.

Scroll down and you will see the point the judge made 'drunken consent is still consent' i.e. she was not paralytic and she 'could not remember' if she had consented or not.

Why should that man have been looking at a potential life sentence?
www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23379673-men-face-jail-for-rape-if-women-are-too-drunk-to-consen t-in-bed-to-boost-convictions.do

o and Molesworth - I'm not talking about 'false reports' of rape. I'm talking about the huge difficulty of establishing lack of consent.

These women weren't malicious in that they simply made up a story about a man having sex with them.

They did have sex. The man thought she was up for it. She wakes up the next morning and decides she wasn't.

I ask again - why should this kind of situation leave the man open to a criminal conviction which has a possible life sentence?